1947-01-27, #1: Doctors' Trial (early morning)

Court resumes after a ten day recess.

Official transcript of the American Military Tribunal in the matter of the United States of America, against Karl Brandt, et al, defendants, sitting at Nurnberg, Germany, on 27 January 1947, 0930, Justice Beals presiding.

THE MARSHAL: Persons in the Court Room will please find their seats.

The Honorable, the Judges of Military Tribunal 1.

Military Tribunal 1 is now in session. God save the United States of America and this honorable Tribunal.

There will be order in the courtroom.

THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Marshal, will you ascertain that the defendants are all present in court.

THE MARSHAL: May it please your Honors, all defendants are present in the Court Room.

THE PRESIDENT: The Secretary-General will note for the record the presence of all the defendants in court.

The Tribunal this morning will recess at approximately 15 minutes after 12 o'clock and will reconvene for this afternoon's session at 2:30 o'clock.

The Tribunal having taken under advisement the admission in evidence of Prosecution's offers Number NO 1063, a document containing the results of investigations carried out in the Netherlands as to experiments and tests made by German medical practitioners on living prisoners, and the resultant War Crimes committed in the following concentration camps, this exhibit having been offered as Prosecution's Exhibit 328, and defense counsel having objected to the admission of this exhibit in evidence, the Tribunal now rules that defendant objections to the admission of this document are overruled and the document will be admitted in evidence. Defense counsel, will, of course, be permitted to argue as to the weight to be given to the matters contained in this document but it is admitted in evidence as Prosecution's Exhibit 328.

The prosecution may proceed.

MR. McHANEY: May it please the Tribunal, the prosecution requests that the witness, Dr. Werner Leibbrand, be summoned to the stand to testify.

THE PRESIDENT: The Marshal will summon the witness, Werner Leibbrand, to the stand.

MR. McHANEY: The examination will be conducted by Mr. Hardy.

WERNER LEIBBRAND, a witness, took the stand and testified as follows:

BY JUDGE SEBRING:

Q: You will hold up your right hand and be sworn, repeating after me, I swear by God, the Almighty and Omniscient, that I will speak the pure truth and will withhold and add nothing.

(The witness repeated the oath.)

DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. HARDY:

Q: Your name is Werner Leibbrand, is it not?

A: Yes.

Q: You were born on 23 January 1896?

A: 1896.

Q: Where were you born?

A: In Berlin.

Q: You are a German citizen?

A: Yes.

Q: Professor, what is your present address?

A: Erlanger, Maximilian Place 2.

Q: You are a doctor of medicine?

A: Yes.

Q: When did you receive your medical degree?

A: In 1920.

Q: From what university, doctor?

A: Berlin.

Q: Now, Doctor, will you kindly outline for the Tribunal what position you held after the completion of your medical studies in 1920, that is, outline either by year what jobs you held, what hospitals you worked in, and so forth, up until the present day.

A: 1919 to 1920, University clinics of Berlin. 1920 to 1927, assistant medical officer and chief medical officer at the Sanatorium, Westend, Berlin, which was a psychiatric sanatorium. 1927 to 1933 I had a practice of my own in Berlin and apart from that I was one of the co-founders of the Psychiatric Welfare Institute of the Municipality of Berlin in the district Tiergarten, and partly also in the North of Berlin, at the Wedding district. 1933 I was released from all my official and semi-official positions for political reasons and racial reasons. I was removed. From 1933 on until the end of the Third Reich I first of all had my private practice and then apart from that I was doing research work on medical history and I wrote a number of important historical works. In 1943 the so-called Action Conti, affected me, that is to say, by means of the so-called civil service duty it resulted in my being posted to the municipal town hospital in Nurnberg, to the Nerve Ward, where I had to occupy a subordinate position as a medical expert. There I was forced, and this was approximately in September 1944, to escape from the arm of the Gestapo which was reaching out for me. My wife, for the same racial reasons, had to escape, and for 7 months we had no food ration cards which continued until the allied troops arrived. We were in flight and we were being pursued in the south of Germany. After the arrival of the allied troops, on the strength of my scientific qualifications I was in June 1945 called upon by the military government at Erlangen and made a director of the municipal hospital at Erlangen. The German government took over my employment and the University of Erlangen, on the 13th of May 1946, nominated me Honorary Professor for History of Medicine. That is the faculty which I am representing now, together with the work of being in charge of the municipal sanatorium.

Q: And, Doctor, at the present time you are a professor of the History of Medicine, Chief Physician of the Municipal Hospital at Erlangen University, is that correct?

A: It is not the university clinic as you said, but the Heil und Pflegeanstalt, the sanatorium of the district government.

In my capacity of a university professor I am reading medical history.

Q: Now, Doctor, you state that you have written several books. Will you kindly tell us the titles and subjects of those books.

A: The first more important work which I wrote was a medical history of the German period of romanticism, that is to say, I wrote a medical historical book covering the periods 1790 to 1830. In 1939 I wrote a principal works which was the History of Medical Metaphysics beginning with the antique period, ending with our present period. In 1914 I wrote as a German the first basic and principal work about the French scientist and priest, Vincent von Paul. He was founder of the French lunatic asylum at St. Lazare. In 1945 and until 1946, I together with my students here at Erlangen, wrote a memorandum in commemoration of the 100 years existence of the lunatic asylum, at Erlangen, in order to underline the human rights of the insane. Besides that there is an ethical dialogue about the health. And then just lately I have written a shorter book about pre-Socrates medical men, that is to say, doctors who lived before Socrates time and the time of Hippocrates and Plato.

Q: In the course of this examination I shall ask you to outline in sequence far the Tribunal, the German Medical Organization prior to 1933 relative to the German Medical Association, the Hartmann Bund, professional ethics and malpractice procedure, certification and licensing of physicians, medical education and then the effect of the Nazi Government on the German Medical Organization after 1933. Now, Professor, was there a National German Medical Association prior to 1933?

A: I shall attempt to describe as briefly as possible the history of the medical profession and its organization in Germany. In Germany, even as early as the middle of the 17th Century, there were individual cases of the forming of unions of medical men, such as, for instance, the so-called Collegium Medicum or the Collegium Chirurgicum, which were organizations formed in various towns such as Schweinfurth, Nurnberg, Bamberg, and other towns; but generally speaking you can consider the personal medical officer Stieglitz at Hanover as being right in saying that the German Medical profession was one of isolation, living in returement and rather like a spider in its web. Later on, for social and political reasons, these matters began to change. The German doctor was, of course, originally living, shall we say, dependent upon the absolutistic order of the State. Consequently, the German medical profession was sub-divided into different classes, strictly separated from each other. For instance, there were surgeons of the first and surgeons of the second class. There were about 20 such groups of general practitioners and wound doctors who were strictly separated from the others and consequently the medical man was, in principle, dependent upon the absolute powers of the State.

There is a famous story of the year 1845, approximately, according to which a doctor in Berlin was called to a patient's bedside and that he thought, from a medical point of view, that the visit was not urgent. Half an hour later a policeman appeared at his bedside and forced him to carry out the visit to this patient. All these matters brought it about that the Western ideas of freedom, beginning with the great Revolution of 1789 and coming from France, spreading to Germany, too, particularly in the case of the medical profession, found a great deal of benevolent interest. It appears to me that from the point of view of historic truth there is no doubt whatever that the medical profession in Germany in particular absorbed the democratic ideas of freedom and human rights with particularly great intensity.

This, in order to be brief, led to unions in which the difference of classes were meant to be removed and in which surgeons, doctors, general practitioners, even the students of medicine, were meeting in so-called medical clubs; but the success of these attempts at a unification was, at least first of all, politically much impeded. That, however, was not even changed by the fact that as great a man as Rudolf Virchow, when he was a young doctor, participated in this political movement for the fight for freedom in a very active manner. He was demanding independence for the medical profession, absolute freedom for that profession, independence from all other institutions of the State, such as, for instance, the Profession of Lawyers had, and he demanded, in addition to that, an organization of its own for the medical profession which would be confined to the basis of expert knowledge and the right to issue its own laws.

The Prussian State, after the Revolution of 1848, had considered these ideas as most suspicious. That State was not at all willing to allow such demands to become successful. It impeded the corresponding applications made by this freedom movement and only in 1873 did success come to Dr. Richter in Dresden to unify the existing doctors' clubs, numbering 111, in one great union. That was the German Medical Doctors' Union and that Union, until the Third Reich continued to exist and it was only in 1936 that Conti dissolved it.

Q: Well, witness, you say that the National German Medical Association was formed in the early 1870's, which tied together all the old local medical associations, is that correct?

A: Yes.

Q: If I understand correctly, the nature of this organization was democratic and its interests included problems of hygiene and public health, is that correct?

A: Yes.

Q: Now what was its express purpose -- what was the purpose for forming this organization? Was it to improve public health and hygiene, to foster medical education and science -- is that a correct assumption, Professor?

A: Yes. First of all there was an attempt to shape a union according to the example of the Lawyer's Union, in order to maintain the moral liberty of the medical profession. Lawyers were used as an example for that, and then there was discussion about the social demands of hygiene which, after all the attacks of the industrialization of the 19th century, and considering its rapid development, demanded very considerable steps, both on the part of the doctors and also for poor patients and the general grain proletariat, in the sense of hygiene.

Q: Professor, are you familiar with the organizations known as the American Medical Association and the British Medical Association?

A: Oh yes.

Q: Are these organizations similar and comparable in purpose to the German Medical Association?

A: That is not to be expressed as simply and straightforward as all that. Principally speaking, in America historical developments were different. I mean by that the development from the pioneer doctor, the craftsman of the old days of the 18th century until the formation of the State was in existence. It is for that reason that the medical profession in the United States developed somewhat differently. I mean because the social revolutionary trend such as was in existence among doctors in Germany after their liberation from absolute suppression to a free democracy in 1848, whereas no such development occurred in the United States. But there are certain boundaries to the history of the medical profession in the States, too. The German Doctors' Union which I have mentioned can, up to a point, be compared with the formation founded in 1847 in Philadelphia, which was called the American Medical Association, which on the other hand, later on, and today, bear a different character, such as the one which is shown by the joint organization of medical officers in Chicago today, which simultaneously issues the most important literary periodicals. That is a development which we in Germany did not experience.

Q: Now, Professor, what happened to this National German Medical Association in 1933? Did it continue to exist in practice or merely in theory? Did the Nazi Government have any influence upon it?

A: No.

Q: Then there was complete disruption among the members of the Medical Association in the advent of the Nazis, is that correct?

A: The German Doctors' Union and the so-called Hartmann Union, which I must mention yet, were, either on the 1st of April 1933 or just a few days later, dealt with by Dr. Gerhardt Wagner, who was appointed State Commissar and coordinated with the so-called National Socialist leadership principles; that is to say, the liberal state development of that union and the Hartmann Union ceased in the course of the general co-ordination( gleichschaltung) under the leadership principle, -- ceased to exist as an independent liberal organization of the German Medical Profession.

Q: Professor, what was the Hartmann Bund and why was it organized?

A: Owing to Bismarck's law of insurance issued in 1882-1883, rather contrary to the development in the United States, the health insurance system developed in Germany. This health insurance system produced a most severe social revolutionary disturbance among the health insurance organizations on one side and doctors and their organizations on the other side. The result was that the very powerful health insurance companies were bullying, socially speaking, the medical profession in Germany and exposing them to a certain amount of a crisis. I shall not go into these facts which ensued in detail because it would be a lengthy story, but the final outcome, from the point of view of organization, was the foundation of a union for the taking care of the economic interests of doctors in Germany by means of the very successful and hard-fighting Dr. Hartmann, so that that union then was named after him, Dr. Hartmann, or Doctors Union, and it was founded in 1900. Once again, it continued to exist until 1933 and once again the Leadership Principles of the State Commissar, Gerhardt Wagner, resulted in its being dissolved.

Q: Professor, now were matters of professional ethics and malpractice considered and settled prior to 1933?

A: To begin with, even in the unions and clubs which I have mentioned, there were naturally certain general ethical and medical principles which, in the Medical Society of Berlin and its predecessors, during Albrecht von Grace' time, led to a special Council of Honor.

But the professional ethic was not brought into being until, by law, in 1887, the medical chambers were put on a legal basis and when, in 1899, the so-called Courts of Honor for doctors, with their own disciplinary system were being introduced, they had a Chamber of Appeal, too. It was the so-called Court of Honor and in both these disciplinary instances there was one legally trained judicial official. The disciplinary punishments of these Courts of Honor, and this is important from the historical point of view, consisted of the following measures which could be introduced: first of all, monetary fines; secondly, reprimand; and thirdly withdrawal of the active and passive right to vote. These disciplinary courts on the other hand, before 1933 at any rate, did not include questions of a general moral nature, which were matters for the Penal Courts to deal with, and most certainly not religious questions and not political questions.

Q: How ware these matters of professional ethics and malpractice considered and settled after 1933?

A: This question can be answered on the basis of a statement of the ethical change in the medical profession. The Doctor, who for thousands of years, even before the Christian era, had the duty of treating the individual patient to the best of his ability; this doctor was now made a biological state officer by the National Socialist system. This is, he no longer decided according to the ethical principals of pre-Christianity and the pre-Christian world in the interests of the individual patient, but he was the agent of a class of leaders who did not concern themselves with the individual, but considered the individual only as an expression of the maintenance of fictitious biological developments of racial ideas and thus tore the heart out of the medical profession, The doctor, who has no primary interest in the patient, who only gives out orders on behalf of a fictitious collective economy, according to the law of the Hippocratic oath, is not a doctor.

Q: Professor, were the medical societies prior to 1933, representing the various specialties, such as internal medicine, surgery, obstetrics, gerontology dermatology, pathology, physiology, etc., as are found in other countries?

A: There were in Germany various medical associations, which one must organize first and there were some professional organizations. These had scientific interests and they discussed the practical questions of medical sci ce. In addition, there were purely scientific organizations of a highly scientific state and high international reputation, such as the Berlin medical Association, the Chemnitz Association, the Fatherland Association in Silesia and the Specialist Scientific Associations for the various specialists. These associations originally, that is in the 1850's and. 1060's of the past century, relied upon professional politics, but in the last decade they withdrew from these politics and essentially devoted themselves to International science.

Q: What happened to these various medical societies after 1933; were they disbanded?

A: They were not disbanded, but their contents changed. The scientific societies, which I have just mentioned, continued to hold meetings until the last years of the war and within the limits and scope of their possibilities continued to do good work, which could have been possible if a free scientific opinion could have been expressed in these societies, but one could not trust one's neighbor. One belonged to the SS, another belonged to the SA and a third might be a spy. Above all, there were a number of scientific subjects, which could not be touched upon at all, because they were too dangerous. However, one could not say if one accepted these subjects. All remained at a low level, but it is a matter of course that the scientist, who Was accustomed to servo the cause of trust sincerely, had to lose interest in participation in these societies and consequently in any special field, the attendance at these meetings was reduced an the course of the years.

Q: Professor, how were physicians licensed before and during the Nazi administration?

A: Before 1933, the medical licensing of doctors corresponded to a ruling, which applied since before 1878; that is after graduating from a secondary school there were premedical studies and an examination after five semesters for the so-called Tentamen physician, the Tentamen physician was introduced instead of the Tentamen philosopnicum, which had been used before. The Tentamen physician dealt with medical science, antiseptics, chemicals, zoology, etc. After having passed this examination, the candidate went into the clinical masters. He went for five semesters and then passed the state examination. After he passed the state medical examination, no became a medical practitioner for one year. After that period, he was licensed as a physician by the Ministry of the Interior and now he could take the Doctor's examination. The Doctor's examination could be taken only after this period.

Q: How was this medical education and training influenced by the Nazi administration?

A: The big structure, which I have just described, did not change essentially after 1933; that is the physician was divided into two parts for a while but otherwise the duties remained the same.

It seems to me, however, to be somewhat synonymous that from the very beginning, after 1933, an attempt was made to shorten the medical studies an, for a very characteristic reason the students would be permitted to marry as quickly as possible. The so-called young marriage was encouraged at the expense of scientific studies; and that is very typical. At the same time, subjects were introduced into the state examinations, such as racial hygiene and hereditary psychology. Also the history of medicine was introduced, but not for purely scientific reasons, but because instructions in medical history were, of course, a fertile field for propaganda in order to indoctrinate the students with typical National Socialistic ideas. There was another very important change in the first semester, there was an organization, the National Socialistic League of Students, a group called National Health or Popular Health. Its purpose was in the first two or three semesters to determine the suitability of the medical students from an ideologic point of view and imports were made. After two semesters, the students would be advised that he was suited or unsuited.

Also there was an essential technical change in the university holidays, which helped the student to digest what he had learned during the course of the year, but duties of the students to participate in work in the country in agriculture and later in factories. Each one included Hitler youth and Service, and S. A. Service and other duties. All these activities did not help to promote scientific studies. But I will not counsel the fact that of course there were other things, those were the arrangements suck as for example the fact that the students were exchanged and spent time there before beginning their studies to take a course in practical nursing, and that other similar students were obliged to work for the Red Cross.

Q: Now, Professor, how did did agitation of National Socialism prior to the Third Reich influence physicians' organizations?

A: Before 1933 which has not been mentioned yet, and consequently it must be explained, there were political medical organizations. First, the Union of Social Democratic doctors; that was an organization predominately of Socialist Colleagues of a medical class and character, the aim of which was to promote social hygiene among the working class to extend the work of the health officials to hold popular medical lectures. This group was directed by Dr. Kollwitz, the husband of the famous German sculptor, Kaothe Kollwitz, who was famous for her statues of proletarian life. The more radical organization, which was the Socialist League of doctors, the purpose of this League was ideology. The Socialist Democratic and the Marxist doctors, who were doctors with Socialistic ideals who wore independent of any party affiliation, but who believed in Socialist development, they were to be included in this League. The head of this organization was the psychoanalyst, Dr. Simmel, who later immigrated to America, as well as a colleague who had practical experience on hygiene in Russia, whose name was Lothar Wolff. Unfortunately, it must be said historically that this association in the last years before 1933, carried out the struggle between the S.P.D. and K.P.D., the Socialist and Communist parties, and that in this struggle they overlooked one thing, that the danger came from a different side, from National Socialism.

In 1929 at a Nurnberg party rally, the National Socialist League of Physicians was founded, which in 1933 became an executive force of the NSDAP, and assumed the work of terror against doctors with other ideas.

Q: Who was the leading character or personality of that organization?

A: The later State Secretary, Dr. Leonardo Conti.

Q: What did this all lead to in Berlin on April 1, 1933, after the establishment of the Third Reich?

A: On the 1st of April 1933, I unfortunately was obliged to experience the efforts in Berlin, which is the greatest disgrace of the medical profession which I have been obliged to witness in my life. I had to see colleagues supply their own cars in order to have Socialist doctors and Jewish colleagues pulled out of their beds in the morning, mistreated, taken to an open space near the Lehrter Station, and the Nationalist Socialist colleagues, together with the S. A. men in uniform had the doctors whom they had arrested run around as if in a hippodrome. They laughed about this. Old non of 70 and even older were running around with their tongues hanging out, because they were threatened with revolvers, because they were hit with sticks and because there were shots now and then. They were left without any care. Some of them stayed for 24 or 48 hours, and were then sent home, but many of them were sent to the notorious S. A. Collars in Hedemann Strasse. They returned home after sometime physically and spiritually broken.

Q: Did I understand you to say, Professor, that medical men were taken out of their beds in this manner by other medical men?

A: It is unfortunately true. And a few days before the first of April it happened that Jewish colleagues under the pretext that they were being called for consultation were called for in cars which they did not know, were taken to the woods, thrown out of the cars and left there bleeding.

Q: Now, Professor, prior to 1933 did men in the medical profession believe that Nazism would lead to the disorganization and downfall of the then medical organizations?

A: Of course there were such doctors, for the terror originated from the small group at that time. The majority of the doctors realized that this development had to lead to a production of the level of morality.

Q: Could a physician conduct any insurance practice if he did not belong to the Nazi medical society?

A: Yes, he could.

Q: Was it possible for the Jewish physician to practice medicine under the Nazis?

A: The Jewish doctors were at first not seriously restricted purposely; if they were War veterans of 1914 they could remain insurance physicians. At first only those who were not war veterans were eliminated from insurance work, and those doctors were eliminated who belonged to the Socialist League of Physicians which I have described, and because it was a Pacifist organization. For example, that was the reason way I was eliminated in 1933, because I was a pacifist and had belonged to the Socialist League of Physicians. But these restrictions later became of a more and more terroristic nature. After the famous November 1938 the Jews were no longer admitted, no longer licensed. The Jews were no longer doctors, they became healers of the sick, Krankenbehandler. They had to have a sign, a yellow sign with a Star of David on it.

Of course, in view of the basic anti-Semitic terrorism, these signs made these people prey. Of course, the Jewish doctors, as the terror against the Jews increased, were impoverished. The doctors were not able to live from their practice. In about, as far as I recall, about 1941 there was a further disgrace for all Jewish citizens of our country. According to the name regulation they had to add the name Sarah or Israel to their name. These names also had to appear on their signs, Then the whole thing deteriorated more and more. These external regulations were not the only thing which affected the lives of the Jewish doctors. They were exposed to constant terroristic actions. From about 1942 on their lives were in serious danger. A person was taken here; a person was taken there; someone disappeared here and finally the colleagues were not seen again because they had been taken away to the East, partly with the pretext that they were to be used as doctors there. And many of these colleagues, many of my own friends, were never heard of again. They are presumably dead.

Q: Doctor, are you yourself Jewish?

A: No, but my wife, and consequently I, was subject to the Nuernberg Laws.

Q: Now, doctor, what happened to the Jewish patients as a result of this purge on the Jewish doctors?

A: The Jewish patients could theoretically in the first years be treated by so-called Aryan doctors. One must, of course, understand that doctors courageous enough to continue to treat Jewish patients could be denounced and that they were terrorized by the National Socialist doctors, but then by special order of the Chamber of Physicians the treatment of Jews was forbidden. This was camouflaged with a humanitarian explanation. It was said the Jewish practitioners must be guaranteed a certain clientele and with such reasons an attempt was made to whitewash these things. It now became very difficult for those Jewish patients who needed hospital treatment, for in small cities there were no Jewish hospitals. In Berlin there was still the famous Jewish hospital which had a very high reputation, but what were conditions like in this hospital? It became more and more a transit station for those who were carried off to an uncertain fate.

It was emptied of instruments, of medicines, and also it was inadequate.

For a time it was still tolerated that Jewish patients, if they took first class accommodations, could be taken into a private sanatorium if, of course, they took their meals in their rooms because the Aryan patients could not be expected, as it said, to eat their meals together with the Jewish patients. But finally that too became intolerable and was forbidden.

There were special difficulties in dealing with insane Jews. It was almost impossible to find a hospital to put them in and there were only a very few courageous owners of sanitariums who attempted to accept such patients. There were a number of denominational hospitals, especially Catholic clinics, which accepted Jewish patients under false names and took care of them very well.

Q: What was the Speer organization and how w t related to physicians who were called foreigners or alleged to have mixed blood?

A: This action was called Action Center. It was the following: About in the summer of 1943 in Berlin a special drive under the pretext of the so-called civil Service obligation, foreign doctors and especially after the Jewish doctors had largely disappeared, the Aryan doctors who were married to Jews and the so-called Mischlinge - that is, persons of mixed blood they were removed from Berlin by order of the main Health Office, together with the ministry of the Interior, by force. By force, for one must not forget that at that time there was an enormous scarcity of doctors; that all these doctors were working from early morning until late at night during the air raids; that many of them were working at hospitals; that many of them had enormous practices and these practices and this work had to be given up within two or three days. They had to take various subaltern positions. I may give the example of my own case because it shows the thing very well. I also had a large practice. I worked as a consultant at a Catholic hospital and I had to give up all this work within a few days and was sent to Munich to the Provincial Chamber of Physicians there. There I was treated in a very unfriendly way, to put it mildly.

That is, in a discriminatory way. I was told that I had to go to the Ministry of the Interior and they would tell me where I was to be sent. The Ministry of the Interior represented, so to speak, the juristic arm of this operation. There was the man in Munich who dealt with these things, a Ministerial Director Jaeger, a medical adviser, Ministerialrat Schmidt. These ordered my appointment as a so-called war assistant physician at the Nuernberg hospital in the nerve clinic. It was noticeable that the men for whom I worked there was a very convinced National Socialist and that of course, since he knew from my record that I was married to a Jew and that I was anything but a National Socialist, that such a chief had to consider me suspicious, and he did.

I do not want to mention things Thick still have to be shown my evidence. I merely want to describe the final result. The attention of the Gestapo was called to me and as a result I had to flee in September of 45. I describe this case only because it is one of many.

And now to come back to the Action Center. This was another step to destroy people in my category; that is, about January 1945 we were disqualified as doctors and we were given special positions in the Organization Speer as laborers. I have heard that some of these colleagues succeeded in being assigned to some sort of medical service but according to the regulation these doctors, including foreigners, were to be used for common labor in the Organization Speer. That was the purpose of the Action Center.

Q: Was the Action Conti connected with these actions Mitte and Speer?

A: It is not quite clear to me from the organizational point of view. The Action Conti, that is, taking the doctors out of their activity and putting them in subaltern positions, this Action Conti went through the Ministry of the Interior, for the man in the Berlin Ministry of the Interior who was in charge of this matter was a certain Oberfeldarzt Dr. Bernhardt. This Dr. Bernhardt was a Wehrmacht medical officer, supposed to be a Wehrmacht medical officer, but actually he was an executive member of the Party who worked for the Ministry of the Interior end carried out this Conti action.

Q: This Action Conti was the one that started early in 1943, which instigated and directed persecution of doctors who were either foreigners or persons of the so-called mixed blood and also those related by marriage to Jews.

Is that correct, Professor?

A: Yes. It must be emphasized from the sociological point of view that removal of an Aryan, formerly head of a family, from his family meant or could mean a death sentence for his wife. One must realize that the wife, as a Jew, had no right to follow her husband to his new position. She had no permission to travel. She could not leave her home, but on the other hand, under the terror which prevailed at that time she did not claim welfare which might have been due her, so that in effect the Jewish marriage partner who was now isolated might expect new measures which might mean, and this did happen, that such members of mixed marriages were sent to the concentration camp at Theresienstadt. One can imagine with what feelings and with what concentration such an Aryan doctor worked in his subaltern position.

Q: Professor, you have stated that the Health Department came under the Ministry of the Interior, Now when the ministry of the Interior under Frick assumed control of the Health Department, what action did he take regarding reorganization and so forth?

A: We have two historical phases. We have a transition phase from 1933 until about 1935. That was the period of the so-called State Commissariat of Gerhardt Wagner. At that time already Mr. Conti became state secretary in the Ministry of the Interior of Mr. Frick. Conti now through Ministerial Director Guett established Section 4 in the Ministry of the Interior. This organization under the leadership principle included the whole medical profession down to the most insignificant doctor in the following way: The Reich Health Office of Mr. Reiter which had existed for sixty years was incorporated to the Ministry of the Interior. The German Red Cross, which in 1934 had the honor of being put under the protection of Adolf Hitler, was in 1937 attached by law to the Ministry of the Interior.

The third organization was a big racial office. On the other hand, the so-called Reich Committee for Public Health developed from this office. Four: This had two subsections again. One was essentially a propagandistic racial factor where people worked such as Lemme, Ruttke, who wrote on hereditary biology, etc., and, second, the big organization of public health, Then there developed from the Ministry of the interior through the Ober Regierungspaaesidenten, governor, etc., the health offices. Therefore, it is clear that the health offices received their direct instructions through these officers from the Ministry of the Interior, and the health officers were in charge of all social hygiene care with the emphasis on the racial element.

There was also a certain connection with the Reich Labor Ministry, and then from the Reich Labor Ministry there was a connection through the provincial and Reich insurance organizations to the medical inspections. That is more or loss the central organization which State Secretary Conti administered through Ministerial Director Guett in Section Four. And I must not forget this part: there were also subsidiary connections to the extra health office, and I call it that of Mr. Ley or the Committee for Health Service of the NSDAP and its subsections, the National Socialist League of Physicians which obtained more and more executive power in the Party and two other organizations such as the Hitler Youth and the Reich Labor Service. All these threads came together and were centralized in the Ministry of the Interior.

I should, therefore, like to sum up once more on what keyboard Mr, Conti played. Mr. Conti was, first of all, state Secretory in the Ministry of the Interior. He was, second, Reich physicians leader; that is, he represented the Reich Chamber of Physicians. Third, he was the Chief of the Public Health Office of the NSDAP, and, consequently, there was not a single medical question which did not reach Mr. Conti in one form or another and which he did not regulate; and I know the special position which Mr. Brandt held from about 1940 on, I believe. Mr. Brandt was a sort of intermediary physician between the Wehrmarkt and the civilian health. His position was legalized by his receiving instructions from the Fuehrer, Adolof Hitler, personally.

Q: Now you have stated, Professor, that Dr. Conti was Reichsaerztofuehrer. Now would you say that all physicians in Germany except those in military duty were subordinate to Conti?

A: With the exception of the Wehrmacht and the SS, yes. Yes. Otherwise they wore all under Conti.

Q: How did Conti control medical meetings and bring pressure to bear on physicians to join the Nazi Party, the SR and the SS?

A: Conti, of course, in his position had the opportunity to play on all organizational instruments. Above all, he could use the newspapers in a propagandists sense, and he did so. He issued a number of proclamations in the German Medical Meekly, and he also used the Berlin Medical Association for that purpose if he had certain political things to put through. For example, I may mention one very important polemic, I believe, about 1942. I said at the beginning of my testimony that the German Medical Profession as a democratic development was in favor of the liberal principle, and it was very funny after the whole medical profession had been put under the terroristic compulsion of the Fuehrer principle that suddenly in 1942 Conti apparently became afraid that the medical profession might be completely socialized. As far as i can recall, there was an effort in this direction from Ley. Another was a struggle between Loy and Conti, and Conti in a memorable speech in the Berlin Medical Association appealed to the colleagues present there that they should remember the old ideas of freedom at the time of Albrecht von Graewe and maintain the freedom of the medical profession so that the medical profession might not be completely socialized. I mention this example only in order to show that Conti had the opportunity of playing on all instruments of this mammoth machine, to play wherever he felt it necessary.

Q: Do you know the name--

THE PRESIDENT The Tribunal will now be in recess for a few moments.

(Recess)